Once again there's borrowing from fiction, specifically the Tube of Immobility (the "tube of blue concentrate" from The Dying Earth books) and the Variable Sword and Slave Disintegrator from Larry Niven's Known Space stories. Once again, these range from the relatively reasonable and useful such as The Non-Pilferable Pouch, the Torque (sic) of Neck Protection, Durian Fingernail Polish which produces various magical effects when the wearer claps (her) hands, and the Breathing Device, to the odd (the Needle of Mystic Mending with which you can sew back on lopped-off limbs), to the outright nutjob (the Instrument of The Sacred Spray - basically a holy-water-firing Super Soaker, or the Embryizor, which forces an enemy to save or lose 1-100 years of aging - and if it's more years than they've lived, yes, the target becomes an embryo). Then there's "The Booty", divided up into "Magical Items" and "Technological Items". It'd have to be a particularly - *ahem* - unique D&D campaign to fit these monsters in. Most have a certain air of goofiness about them some are outright painful - the "Gas Bag Neck People" (yes, that's their name), the ape-like Tortilla, the Egg People from Venus (complete with built-in helicopter), and the Malevolent Mana Muncher. Some of the creatures are borrowed from fiction, such as the Erb and the Leucomorph (the big tentacled thing on the cover) from Jack Vance and the Coeurl from A.
"The Beasts" is futher divided up into six sections: "Creatures of the Land", ranging from the relatively reasonable Deathspinner and Thresher to the Encounter Critical-esque Reactor Beast and Neutronium Golem "Creatures of the Sea" such as the swarm-like Deadly Diatoms, the ultra-deadly Vacucumber which can slurp passengers off ship decks, and the painfully goofy-looking Neptunians "Creatures of the Sky" (and deep space, evidently) such as the 272 hit-dice Galactic Dragon, the piercer-like Meteor Beings, and the Beam Bat "Demons" like the bizarre column-like Pentagoth and the R-rated topless Queen Of Lust (well, maybe PG-13) "Parasites" such as the magic-eating Amorphosite, the Marrow Worm, and the insectoid Nelia Parasite (boy, HE looks familiar somehow.) and "Robots" such as the Medi-Robot, the Arachnotron, and the Dreadbot (think Gamma World "Death Machine"). They claimed to be for "fantasy role-playing games" but as D&D, T&T and Runequest were pretty much it back then, they tended toward D&D in terms of stat-ing monsters and treasure.īatB is divided into two main sections: "The Beasts", which detail monsters, demons and robots, and "The Booty", which lists various magical and technological devices for giving out when "The Beasts" are defeated, presumably.
Back in the late '70s, before D&D and other RPGs became something you saw on the counter at Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby, there were quite a few "generic" RPG supplements like "Booty And The Beasts" published.
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